National Security Reform for the Twenty-First Century: A New National Security Act and Reflections on Legislation’s Role in Organizational Change

National security threats in the twenty-first century, such as terrorism, proliferation, failing states, and climate change, are fast, dynamic, and complex. Meeting them successfully requires a capacity to integrate all instruments of U.S. national power – diplomacy, military force, intelligence, law enforcement, foreign aid, homeland security, education, transportation, and health and human services – into a single system supporting a common mission.

By Gordon Lederman

Gordon Lederman, Esq., serves on the Special Bipartisan Staff hired by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and was one of the lead Senate staff drafters and negotiators of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Gordon previously spent close to five years as an Associate in the National Security Law and Policy Practice Group at the law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. The author of several publications, Gordon is a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and a former clerk for the Honorable Robert Cowen of the U.S. Third Circuit Court Appeals. Currently, Gordon is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is Co-Chair of the Council’s Washington Term Member Advisory Committee.

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